


How can you be so sure?

by sshysmm



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, I'm Sorry, Spoilers, but this is better, fuck i just wrote 15000 words of trashy au where everyone lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9182941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: “Do you think anyone’s listening?”His breath is laboured, and her grip mustn’t be helping whatever injuries he sustained during that fall, but Jyn Erso sees amusement crinkle the corner of his eye, his lip quirk up a fraction.“Yes. I do.”--Cassian and Jyn, from the top of the Citadel to the edge of the beach.





	

 

“Do you think anyone’s listening?”

His breath is laboured, and her grip mustn’t be helping whatever injuries he sustained during that fall, but Jyn Erso sees amusement crinkle the corner of his eye, sees his lip quirk up a fraction.

“Yes. I do,” she replies simply.

He gives her a look, a nod as if that was what he’d expected her to say, but she wonders how he can possibly contemplate that no one received the file. Now, as the sky seems to rain fire and starships down around them, at what she suddenly realises is the end of their mission.

Something like pity turns her heart, and she endeavours to hold his struggling, shaking body closer as they inch towards the elevator. She knows nothing about him — _I joined the Rebellion when I was six!_ — about what sort of person hauls their battered body up an elevator shaft, ignorant of what he might find at the top, who does so just because she might still need his help, regardless of whether anyone is listening, of whether the mission succeeds and the plans escape. _You’re not the only one to have lost everything._ The sort of person who’d pull her out of the destruction of Jedha, mind near-scrambled with the grief of seeing Saw and her father again, even though she’d no longer been a part of his mission. Who’d spare her father, manage to get him killed anyway, and still fight to pull her, more extraneous than ever, from the wreckage of Eadu.

How could he doubt that anyone was listening? She won’t believe that this was just another idiotic attempt at rescue.

But she realises that she sort of like the idea that it might have been. It’s so absurd. The fate of the galaxy, hanging on a dogged obsession that a professional spy has developed over the course of a few days. She’d grin if she wasn’t already grimacing at his weight as they stumble into the dark of the lift.

Jyn pushes his back up against the side of the compartment; she jabs a button that should take them somewhere, anywhere, away from the swaying pinnacle of the Citadel. She keeps an arm wrapped around his narrow waist, feeling his strength plummet faster than the elevator itself. The smell of his blaster wound fills the small space, and she looks up at him, hoping to find the dark twinkle in his eyes that will tell her he’s still there with her, still surviving, still hasn’t given up entirely.

He’s staring at her. She smiles a little, but it’s wan and resigned when she sees the certainty on his face. She wonders what sort of person could get so thoroughly inside her head, her heart, her skin, in so short a time, that she can be so calm in facing her end by his side. Will it be the blasters of troopers? A languishing in Imperial jails yet again? She hopes she’ll be brave, whatever is at the bottom of the lift shaft.

\--

He marvels at her, as he’s already grown used to doing. She’s so certain that it was worth something, that someone picked up the transmission — someone from the Rebellion, no less. How can she be so sure?

Everything sears and aches, but the pain almost feels good where it’s her tough fingers gripping his side. His shirt has rumpled, and her hand is on bare skin, skin sweating with the effort required to keep Cassian Andor upright. He fixes his stare on her, holding desperately to the focus she brings him, making his vision smooth the blurring edges of her pale face. She is so beautiful in the flickering, cold light of the elevator.

He might have berated himself for this attachment, but by the time he’d realised how deeply he’d been drawn into her flames, it was far too late to do anything about it. She is a bright light, and he wants, _needs_ desperately to follow that light.

_Rebellions are built on hope_. He’d heard that she’d taken his line from Jedha and used it before the council, though to no avail. Now, feeling his strength ebb, pain clawing up his body and pulling at his breath, he realises he’d lost whatever hope he’d clung to in the rebellion some time since. But she has brought it back, and while she stands so close, looking up at him questioningly, longingly, he knows he still has _some_ hope.

Oh stars, he does not want to die now.

The look on her face contains no reproach, no anger, just a simple, open desire to know more. Know him more. Find out more about herself. Live on. Survive. It makes him want to believe in bacta patches and transport shuttles, and the survival of others.

But just as he could not share her certainty about the safe delivery of the transmission, he cannot quite let himself believe in the possibility of these aids. The adrenaline that had forced him to the top of the Citadel has now blown away in the gentle breeze of Scarif’s atmosphere. It had left him just as soon as she had come to his side, held him close, took over the responsibility for keeping him on his shuddering legs.

The thought of flight, of hours in hyperspace, of escape; these bring him fear. Whereas now, in this moment, there is a certainty that does not exist outside the small elevator compartment. He is certain that he could not have preferred to have ended his days anywhere else; with anyone else.

The lift slows, comes to a stop, and he steels himself once again for movement.

\--

They totter their ludicrous three-legged race through the sand. He tries to put all he wants to say to her in words she’ll understand in the short time they have left.

“Your father would be proud of you.”

She cleaves to him, her determination, force and stubbornness driving them on down the beach. That is, until both look up at the brightening horizon, and his legs give way, crashing gratefully to the beautiful, white sands of Scarif. She falls to kneel opposite him, eyes fixed on the wave of destruction that builds up across the sea.

Their hands find each other. She figures this is probably better than blasters, but she’d really not intended to come to Scarif to die. She looks at Cassian for strength, find his calm brown eyes and reaches out to grasp him, thinking that if she holds him tight enough she’ll share his courage in whatever happens.

He gasps in her tight embrace, lifting his arms behind her back as a hot wind howls around them, whipping her hair so that it tickles his fingers. She feels strong and brave and alive. She feels like hope. He opens his eyes wide.

He doesn’t want to die.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, I've spent two days solid, bingeing on (mostly) AU and Fix-it fics. And they are so good. And I need to write one myself. But this little strand has been in me since the first time I saw the movie, which has a perfect ending, and a perfect arc between Jyn and Cassian, and which I wouldn't change for the world. But damn, if it's not the kind of set-up fandoms are built for.
> 
> Anyhow. That last shot of them on the beach, as they're enveloped? Cassian opens his eyes wide right before. And it BREAKS MY LITTLE HEART. That is all.
> 
> [Old EU fangirl here who threw out all her books* in disillusionment at the prequels and was too young/deprived of internet in rural areas to participate in fandom before. Loving the SW fandom right now though, you guys rock.]  
> *...well, all but the X-Wing books.


End file.
